As a React framework, Next.js is set up for scalability. TikTok, Apple, Netflix and Spotify, among others, use it for their websites. Yet Next.js turns out to be a “sledgehammer to hang a picture frame,” says a developer of ComfyDeploy.
ComfyDeploy is a tool to run ComfyUI, which can generate video, images and audio with generative AI. One of its founders and also its CTO, Benny Kok, makes no bones about it: “You don’t need Next.js.” After switching from Next.js to just the React framework, ComfyDeploy’s build time went from 3 minutes to 18 seconds. Hot reloads now take only 200 milliseconds, and page switching is also faster. The migration took a week.
Too expensive, too heavy
The cost was the primary motivation for switching over. An unexpected $2,000 bill from Next.js maker Vercel involved the API usage of just a single user. However, frustrations also ran high within the dev team because of Next.js’s slowness and complexity, which seemed an ill fit to the project. Going back to just React proved to have many advantages, as ComfyDeploy also said goodbye to unused dependencies and changed its API approach.
The team behind ComfyDeploy is not alone in its criticism of Next.js. For example, one developer complains that the industry is being pushed toward a framework that doesn’t fit more minor projects. Another suggests that modern projects are too often set up as if they need to scale to billions of users. Although React-based sites send more code to the browser than necessary, many say it is a better experience to build via React than with “bare” HTML or CSS.
Support where needed
By the way, the ComfyDeploy team didn’t stop at React with the migration. TanStack Router and the Rspack bundler count as necessary additions. Kok is nevertheless positive about Next.js if developers aspire to a larger project with advanced features. Regardless, surveys show that it is a widely used tool, but alternatives such as Deno Fresh, Solidstart, and SvelteKit are more popular.
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